As a kid, one of the TV shows that I used to watch with great interest was this series called the 'Automan'.

The story revolved around a computer programmer and a police officer by the name of 'Walter Nebicher'. Walter worked at the Local Police Department's Computer crimes division.

Originally, Walter started out as a regular police officer, working on tackling crime on the streets. Walter's boss,Captain Boyd did not fully approve of the work he had been doing and hence, Walter was relegated to the Computer Lab. A demotion of sorts?

Here is an excerpt from the opening/introduction from the TV show (also shared below int he video) and as narrated by the main character (Automan).

"... Walter must fight crime in his own way – in the computer room. That's where he's an expert. Fortunately for me, Walter's advanced knowledge of electronics led him to experiment with what is known as a hologram.

That's a very fancy word for a three-dimensional picture that, when perfected, can be made to look real, sound real. As a matter of fact, given enough power, it can be made to feel real. That's kind of what got me into this work. My name is Automan...."

If you are reading this and you haven't seen the TV show, then you should check out the clip shared above before reading any further. This brief intro will give you a good idea of what the show was about and the right kind of background information about the two main characters.

Yes, in order to build the story and the narrative, there was the supporting cast, like Captain Boyd, Roxanne and Lt. Jack Curtis. However the majority of the TV show revolved around Walter, Automan and cursor.

Which brings us to cursor

Cursor was this flying and buzzing construct. Basically a hologram. But a hologram that would serve the function of a conduit between the real world and the digital world.

While Automan could run autonomously. Cursor would only 'execute', based on the instructions received through Automan.

By execute, I just don't mean the execution of simple computer program. No wonder there was some rich Natural language processing going on. But, cursor could actually conjure objects and entire constructs from the digital world and into the real world. Some examples below:

The really awesome thing was that Walter, as in a biological creature, could then hop along for a ride in these amazing inventions. That cursor had the ability to be able to provision these devices into the real world in a matter of seconds. These inventions and creations somehow made a transcendental leap from the digital world and into the 'real world'.

As a kid growing up in the 80's, we did not think much about the underlying technologies too much. All we really cared about was that this was a really cool TV show and we just wanted to see the good guys win.

Now that I look back, it's amazing to see how life imitates art.

Today we have:

3-d printing and soon we will have the ability to 3-d print anything, anywhere. Perhaps in due course of time we will have the ability to 3d print complex machinery in a very short amount of time.

Holograms are right around the corner and coming to a smart-phone/tablet of your choice by next year.

We also have machine vision and machine learning. And while these technologies may be in their infancy, I think that we are going to see some spectacular breakthroughs in this area in a very short time frame. (within the next 8 to 12 years or less)

Automan has been on my mind for quite some time now. Considering the rapid pace of technological change, I thought it prudent to recollect some of my memories from the 80's and document them in this blogpost.

A question for my readers: Has there been any TV show/content made during the past 10 years that inspires kids to take up careers in STEM related fields in the near future?

In a near future state, we can get to a 1:1 student and teacher ratio. Something that is powered by a combination of the following:

Human and in-person instructors.

Pooling the teacher resources and virtualizing these resources. Providing on-demand access to teachers.

And if we train certain technologies and then teach them to teach. Then we can get to teachers that are AI or AI that are teachers. I think, this reality (in particular) still 4 to 7 years away. Depending on, when we start tackling this problem.

I think, 1:1 student and teacher ratio is 7 to 10 years out.

In the interim, MOOCs can help. MOOCs have come a long way since the early days of OpenCourseware (MIT). Today you get quality content from virtually all the leading platforms. From Udacity to Coursera, Khan Academy to Udemy.

Amongst other things, the purpose of packaging data in such a way, is to ensure:

Identification: That only nodes that have requested the data are provided with this information.

Guaranteed delivery, Reliability and Error control: That the data gets delivered from point A to B. That redundancy and fault tolerance is baked into the construct.

Now when it comes to the transmission of information, we've seen some remarkable innovations when it comes to the medium.

But, I suspect that the following may have been overlooked:

Intelligent re-design and upgrades of protocols (TCP/IP in particular) so as to use their guided evolution in order to offer a great user experience.

Tying that movement with the delivery of truly intelligent content.

Rules:

Remove ambiguous redundancy: If I have seen it (content) before, then I do not wish to see it again across any medium/platform. This may include, but is not limited to the same message across different mediums. For example a tweet that I favourited, only to find an email about the same tweet in my Inbox later on.

Enable true discovery: If I have seen 'a' type content before, then I may wish to see another type/class of content that is similar <enter parameters) in nature/properties/classification.

Constructing insights, leading to epiphanies. All garnered from historical data: User has shown an interest in 'a' type of content before and has exhibited 'b' level of interest across 'c' topics.

Marry it with the other senses and identifiers: The web remains a strong audio and visual medium. It's evolving. But what's missing is diversity and out of the box thinking in terms of leveraging the different senses and tying that with the medium.

Use cases (*Not* in the order of the Rules showcased above):

User has 'seen' this exact same content before and the construct 'recognizes' that. Hence, the construct repackages the overall content (container) before it is delivered to the user's 'eyes'. Replaced by other content that the user has yet to see.

User has 'seen' this 'type' of content before and the previous level of 'engagement' related to this type of content has been lack lustre at best. Hence, the construct not only avoids showing the user this particular instance of the content. But it works intelligently in the background in order to avoid showing the user this type of content now and in the future. However, it's not a hard firewall rule per say. But more of an intelligent filter. The user has the ability to specifically asks for this type of content. Think of this as anti-discovery on the fringe, resulting in pro-discovery at the core.

User has 'experienced' a variety of content type and has exhibited 'y' range of interactivity with this content. The discovery portion of the constructs kicks in automatically and makes recommendations.

Near future use-case: User has 'engaged' with the content on 'y' levels and has exhibited 'z' level of cognitive activity (True predictor of engagement).

Overall, at this point in time the web and technology in general is a very visual medium. There are at least 3 other mediums and a whole range of potential and diverse experiences that can be powered by making use of these other mediums.

New and diverse forms of interactions are possible. But I suspect that we either need to re-write TCP/IP or create a completely new protocol.

P.s: I am using this new theme that makes the 'Title' go all CAPS. I like the theme, but not the all-caps.